At Least 23 Ethical Issues Are Dogging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
Source: Huffington Post
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2. A shady real estate deal in Oklahoma.
In 2011, Pruitt and his wife, Margaret, bought a property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, days before a court ruled that it had been fraudulently transferred by a Las Vegas developer who was on the hook for a $3.6 million loan default, according to a report the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy published Thursday in Salon. Pruitt, then Oklahoma attorney general, flipped the property four months later, selling it to a shell company set up by a major campaign donor, Tulsa business magnate and Oklahoma Republican Party finance chair Kevin Hern.
3. Giving unapproved raises.
Pruitt used a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give two of his longtime aides raises of $56,765 and $28,130 after the White House rejected his request for the salary increases. The law includes a provision that allows the administrator to hire up to 30 people without White House or congressional approval for work related to the law. In a contentious Fox News interview on Wednesday, Pruitt insisted the action was taken without his knowledge, and said he didn’t know who made the decision. But the law dictates that the administrator must approve the hires, calling his exasperated statements on Trump’s favorite cable channel into question.
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5. His frequent trips back home to Oklahoma.
The EPA shelled out between $2,000 and $2,600 for Pruitt’s first-class flights to his home state of Oklahoma, where he spent 43 out of 92 days last spring. The trips cost a total of more than $12,000 in airfare, according to records released last year. His frequent travel triggered a probe from the EPA inspector general, and prompted speculation that the former Oklahoma attorney general was using the EPA’s budget to lay the groundwork for an eventual campaign for governor or Senate in the Sooner State.
6. About that Morocco trip...
The EPA inspector general recently expanded its inquiry into Pruitt’s travel costs to include expenses related to the December trip to Morocco to promote liquefied natural gas. The trip also attracted new scrutiny in light of Pruitt’s Washington housing arrangement. The EPA denied that Pruitt met with officials from Cheniere Energy Inc., a gas firm that paid Williams & Jensen $80,000 for lobbying, or the lobbying firm itself. But Democrats called the trip outrageous, and one insisted, “This is not an area within his portfolio. He’s not supposed to be globetrotting to promote the sale of LNG.”
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23. Naming a coal lobbyist as his No. 2 ― the man who could replace him.
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Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-scandals-list_us_5ac66dffe4b09d0a1191647f
Astute DU readers will already have heard of up to ten of the ethics violations. That leaves plenty others.
Keep him around so tRump can rail against him for too many scandals stepping on "news" tRump is trying to promote. Or fire him and rack up more chaos and failed cabinet members and empty posts. Either way, Trump chose him and will suffer the results of tRump's colossal incompetence.
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